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I met Andrea (Andie) Ptak, five years ago in a class for
bloggers where I learned, unrelated to the class, (but maybe the most useful
thing to come out of it) that she had converted her yard into a native plant
garden and certified backyard habitat.

When I drove up to Andie’s house in South Seattle last Saturday for an interview in honor of Native Plant Appreciation Week, this week, she was standing outside surveying her work.

Her front yard was abuzz with low flying bees working the Lithodora. “It’s not native but the bees like it,” says Andie who is in her mid-sixties. “I leave the dandelions alone, at least until there are more flowering plants,” she adds, noting the few dandelions that spotted the yard. (Dandelions are after all a native, and the bees first food coming out of hibernation.)

Andie is talking a mile a minute pointing out all the natives – native violets, native bleeding hearts, native irises, more than I can quickly write down. All these plants I’ve heard and seen pictures of but never been able to find.

“It’s very hard to find natives at nurseries,” Andie says, “You have to wait for the native plant sales.”

And those only happen a couple of times a year.

I know. I’ve been trying to cultivate a backyard habitat since my daughter was in preschool. A butterfly garden sounded good; it would take food (native plants), water and shelter, but it never went anywhere.

The sales are daunting. Full of pots with straggly bits of
green in them – it’s hard to know what you’re buying or what to do with it
unless you’re an expert.

And Andie is. She’s a Certified Master Urban Naturalist, a
titled she earned in 2015 through an intensive 6-month program at Seward Park
offered by the Audubon Society. Completion required doing a major project, and
hers was a Native Plant Super Saturday that she organized at the park.

Next, we head to her back yard which is about six times as
large as the front. Both were just pure grass she tells me, when she and her
husband Aaron bought the place. Not even a tree. Now there are native and
fruit-bearing trees and bushes throughout. Andie’s yard is about half native,
half non-native. If the non-natives are not invasive, they’re fine. About a
third of the back yard is covered in wood chips and serves as a dog run for their
two Golden Retrievers, Paprika and Cayenne, “The Spice Girls.”

The dogs follow us into the back yard living up to their
names. Paprika, the older dog, is mellow and sweet, and Cayenne, about seven
months, is excitably jumping on me almost every chance she can get, which is flattering.
Andie keeps warning her off, finally calling Aaron to take her away.

“Maybe you should have called her Cinnamon,” I offer.

The garden in back has meandering paths, with bird baths, yard
art, a trellis enclosed patio, and other seating areas. It’s just starting to
come into bloom. There are more natives back here from flower to fern to ground
cover to tree. Hidden within this garden is a loosely fenced-in food garden
with large blueberry bushes, a ground cultivated for planting vegetables, and
another area with raspberry canes.

Why native? So many reasons, Andie says, they support the
pollinators. That’s a big one as she writes in her blog, “As our population
grows, mankind encroaches on the natural world, pushing out species of both
plants and animals—some to the state of extinction. There’s not a lot I can do
personally to save the tiger or polar bear, but I can make sure that area
songbirds have plenty of food and a place to nest, and that bees
and butterflies have sources for nectar.”

Native plants also conserve water, she adds, because they’re
acclimated to our climate of wet winters and dry summers. And they’re
beautiful. “They’re not as showy as the non-natives,” she admits, “and they’re
hard to cultivate in pots, and that’s likely why they’re hard to find at the
nurseries.”

They’re also not as straggly as I feared. Her natives are thick, growing in dense
clusters. Andie’s yard will be lush come summer. They spread and reseed
themselves, says Andie. She also helps them along by dividing and replanting. What
started as just a couple of small pots picked up at a native plant sale has
spread to cover nearly every inch of her yard.

Native plants are low maintenance once established, which is
what attracted me to them, but they’re also slow to grow.

I started by planting a few natives in one bare spot in my
yard, throwing water on them regularly as they took root. But I never really had time to cultivate them.
Sometimes years would go by with barely a weed being pulled. Now, these many
years later (my daughter is about to graduate from college), they’ve taken off.
They’re crowding each other out. The Tall Oregon Grape, Low Oregon Grape, Inside-out
Flower, Sword Fern, Columbine, Kinnikinnik, a Mock Orange, which everyone
loves, and a Red-Flowering Current. Only the hardy Salal didn’t take. Go
figure.

The Red-Flowering Current went from being a couple of feet
tall to over six feet and almost as wide. Recently trudging home from work, I
came upon it in bloom spilling forth pinkish red blossoms that lifted my
spirits. Then if that wasn’t enough a hummingbird was zipping around them.

Seeing Andie’s garden, I’m inspired. Maybe a backyard
habitat is still within reach.

Nodding toward the non-natives as I’m leaving, Andie tosses out why she keeps them with the natives, summing up what I’m looking for in a garden, “You can live here if I don’t have to do too much for you.”